In 1983 Williams entered the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. She was made an ensign in 1987 and reported for aviator training at the Naval Aviation Training Command. In July 1989 she began combat helicopter training. She flew in helicopter support squadrons during the preparations for the Persian Gulf War and the establishment of no-fly zones over Kurdish areas of Iraq, as well as in relief missions during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 in Miami.

In 1993 she became a naval test pilot, and she later became a test pilot instructor, flying more than 30 different aircraft and logging more than 2,770 flight hours. When selected for the astronaut program, she was stationed aboard the USS Saipan.

Williams completed an M.S. in engineering management from the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne in 1995, and she entered astronaut training in 1998. She traveled to Moscow, where she received training in robotics and other International Space Station (ISS) operational technologies while working with the Russian Federal Space Agency and with crews preparing for expeditions to the ISS.

On December 9, 2006, Williams flew aboard the space shuttleDiscovery on the STS-116 mission to the ISS, where she was a flight engineer for Expeditions 14 and 15. During her stay at the space station, she made four space walks, totaling more than 29 hours outside the spacecraft, and spent a total of more than 195 days in space, both of which were records for women in space. (She held the latter record until 2015, when Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti spent more than 199 days in space.) She also participated in the Boston Marathon by running 42.2 km (26.2 miles) on the station’s treadmill. She was the second American astronaut of Indian heritage to go into space, after Kalpana Chawla, who died in the Columbia disaster. Williams landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California with the crew of STS-117 on June 22, 2007.

Sunita Williams running on a treadmill while participating in the Boston Marathon from the …

NASA

Williams flew to the ISS again on July 15, 2012, as part of the crew of SoyuzTMA-05M. She was a flight engineer on Expedition 32, and on September 16 she became commander of Expedition 33. She made three more space walks, totaling more than 21 hours, retaining her space walk record with a total time outside the ISS between her two flights of more than 50 hours. She also completed a triathlon in orbit by using a treadmill, a stationary bicycle, and a weightlifting machine to simulate the swimming portion of the race. Williams returned to Earth on November 11 after nearly 127 days in space. Her two spaceflights combined lasted more than 321 days, making her second, after American astronaut Peggy Whitson, for the most time spent in space by a woman.

In 2015 Williams was selected as one of four astronauts to make the first test flights in NASA’s Commercial Crew program, in which two new private crewed spacecraft, SpaceX’sDragon and Boeing’s CST-100, would take astronauts and supplies to the ISS. Flights were scheduled to begin in 2017.

Learn More in these related articles:

designation, derived from the Greek words for “star” and “sailor,” commonly applied to an individual who has flown in outer space. More specifically, astronauts are those persons who went to space aboard a U.S. spacecraft. Those individuals who first traveled aboard a...

institution of higher education conducted by the U.S. Department of the Navy and located at Annapolis, Md., for the purpose of preparing young men and women to enter the lowest commissioned ranks of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.

(1990–91), international conflict that was triggered by Iraq ’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, ordered the invasion and occupation of Kuwait with the apparent aim of acquiring that nation’s large oil reserves, canceling a large debt...